An interview with writer James Frey in this morning’s Guardian has irked me somewhat; not because I think Frey deserved all the flak he received for fabricating parts of his memoir, A Million Little Pieces, but because there are other ‘writers’ out there getting away with far worse.
As far as I can make out, Frey’s worst crime was to make Oprah Winfrey feel like a bit of an idiot for defending him. She’s a powerful woman, and rightly proud of her book club, and yes, Frey should have been upfront about the fabricated parts of his book: it would have sold anyway. But Frey was no more culpable than many autobiographers – he just happened to get caught. In fact, I reckon there were probably many writers out there shaking in their snakeskin boots after the debacle with A Million Little Pieces, wondering when the investigative journalists would turn the lamp of scrutiny on their so-called life story.
But the autobiographer who pads out her story with a little bit of creative writing is a mere mugger compared to the child pornographers who use ghosts to write their ‘auto’biographies. I’m talking here about the Jordans of this world, who produce volume after volume of ‘My Story’, passing it off as though they sat in the attic for five months, beavering away over the word-processor until the words all fell into place. This is just plain deception, for though the story may well be about them, it most certainly wasn’t written by them, and it should say so on the front cover, in big bold type.
I’m not against ghostwriting at all. It’s something of a noble art, as far as I’m concerned, and there are people out there who can’t or won’t write but who deserve to have their story told. But if you are going to tell the world who you really are through the medium of a ghostwriter, you should be upfront about it, otherwise you are setting a rotten example.
The other day I had to write a passage in some Diploma materials explaining what plagiarism is and why it is wrong. The definition I came up with was ‘the passing off of someone else’s work as your own, without their permission’. Clearly ghosts give their permission for writers to plagiarise their work, but this doesn’t make it okay. We tell students to carefully note down the source of all materials they borrow, and to faithfully cite them in the text. This is right and proper; stealing words is still stealing and pretending you are a writer when you are not is fraud.
James Frey may have passed off parts of his memoir as factual, but at least he wrote the darn book himself. In that sense, it is far more of a memoir than any ghostwritten book could ever be.
Plagiarism
To be fair to Jordan (not something that comes easily), she’s quite open about the fact that her own fingers have never come within 10 yards of the keyboard; all she provides is the brand identity.
I have a sneaking sort of admiration for ghosts who take on tasks like this (Hunter Davis doing Wayne Rooney is another one). They have to impose a certain level of coherence and literacy to the text; but they still have to communicate the essential inarticulate crassness of their clients, to make the thing gel with the public’s perception.
i see your point, but Frey still went beyond a little fudging of anecdotes… he invented a whole girlfriend, complete with suicide, and said he had root canal without so much as a shot of novacane, then lapped up praise from people who got phrases from his book tattooed on their forearms. I’d say that bumps him up from mugger to, mmm, corporate embezzler at least.
Tim: I’m going to make a confession now. I bought Jordan’s first autobiography when it came out, and enjoyed it. I didn’t find out it had been ghostwritten until some years later, and I was irked because I’d been impressed by her writing abilities. She may be upfront about it in the press, but she isn’t upfront about it on the covers of her books, and I wonder how many other people have been hoodwinked in the same way I was.
Ms Foot: God, I’d forgotten about the root canal description; talk about visceral. I came to the book after the whole furore, so I suppose I never had the opportunity to feel let down by the deception. I wonder what I’d have done in his shoes: fess up to the lies once the book started to get popular, or just run with it and pray that no one found out the truth.